Pathfinder Read online

  “A royal scholar.”

  “Of course. But in time, in years, I’ll be an old man who is known for his publications far more than for my parentage. No one will fear me, or put some idiotic revolutionary hopes in me, or any of our family, because we’ll be something else.”

  “They won’t let you go to the library anyway.”

  “But perhaps your dear friend Flacommo will send a servant to carry my letters to the librarians and help me find the books I need.”

  “You aren’t a scholar,” said Mother. “I’m just telling you what I know Flacommo will say.”

  “Then why not invite scholars to come and examine me, to see if I’m scholar enough to be worth giving access to the library? I’m not suggesting that we actually talk face to face—the last thing I want is for some scholar who cares nothing for politics to get dragged into contact with us. But let them sit in one room, and send me written questions. Then I’ll answer them aloud, so they can hear my voice and know that someone else is not writing my answers for me. I’ll submit myself completely to their judgment.”

  “It sounds complicated, and I can’t think why any scholars would bother to do it.”

  “I can’t either. But what if they were willing?”

  “It’s worth suggesting to Flacommo.”

  “Tell him that my father was a remarkable man. Being educated by him was like attending the finest college in the wallfold.”

  “You mean the finest college in the Republic,” said Mother.

  “The borders are identical.”

  “But someone might think you were saying ‘wallfold’ to avoid saying ‘the Republic.’”

  Rigg suddenly grew grave. “Oh, I never thought—yes, I will always say ‘the Republic’ from now on. Let no one think I wish to forget or show disrespect to the Revolutionary Council. I think of the Council and the Wall as being equally everlasting.”

  “I have one other concern,” said Mother. “Your father—your real father, my husband, my beloved Knosso Sissamik—was obsessed with the Wall, with the science around the Wall. He spent his life in pursuit of a theoretical way through the Wall. He died in an attempt to cross it.”

  “I never heard of the Wall killing anybody,” said Rigg.

  “He thought of passing through the Wall in a boat.”

  “Surely that’s been tried a thousand times—by accident, if no other way—as fishermen got carried off in a storm.”

  “You know the Wall puts a madness on people who try to pass through. The nearer they get to the Wall, the madder, until they either flee from it screaming, or completely lose their minds and wander around in a stupor from which they never emerge. Fishermen who get swept through the Wall are almost certainly madmen when their boat reaches the other side—none have returned.”

  “You shared my father Knosso’s interest?”

  “Not at all,” said Mother. “But I loved him, and so I listened to all his theories and tried to serve him as I’m serving you now—by raising objections.”

  “Then tell me how Father Knosso thought he might solve the problem?”

  “His idea was to pass through the Wall unconscious,” said Mother. “There are herbs known to the surgeons. They create distillations and concentrations of them, and then inject them into their patients before cutting them. They can’t be aroused by any pain. And yet in a few hours they wake up, remembering nothing of the surgery.”

  “I heard that such things were possible in the past,” said Rigg. “But I also heard that the secrets of those herbs had been lost.”

  “Found again,” said Mother.

  “In the Great Library?” asked Rigg.

  “By your father Knosso,” said Mother. “You see, you weren’t the first royal to think of becoming a scholar.”

  “Well, there it is!” cried Rigg. “Did they let Father Knosso have access to the library?”

  “They did,” said Mother. “In person. He would walk there—it wasn’t far.”

  “And now the surgeons of Aressa Sessamo—and the wallfold, too—I mean, the Republic—have benefitted!”

  “Your father lay down in a boat, which was placed in a swift current that moved through the Wall in the north, far beyond the western coast. He injected himself with a dose that the surgeons agreed was right to keep a man of his weight deeply asleep for three hours. There were floats rigged on the boat so it couldn’t capsize, even if it ran into shore breakers before he could wake up. And he brought along more doses, so he could row himself to an inflowing current and repeat the process and return to us.”

  “Did he make it through?” asked Rigg.

  “Yes—though we have no way of knowing if he was made insane by the passage through the Wall. Because he died without waking.”

  “And you know this because he never returned?”

  “We know this because no sooner was he beyond the Wall on the far side than his boat sank into the water.”

  “Sank!”

  “Trusted scientists watched through spyglasses, though he was three miles away. The floats came off and drifted away. Then the boat simply sank straight down into the water. Knosso bobbed on the surface for a few moments, and then he, too, sank.”

  “Why would a boat sink like that?” asked Rigg.

  “There are those who say the boat was tampered with—that the floats were designed to come loose, and a hole was deliberately placed in the boat with a plug in it that was soluble in salt water.”

  “So he was murdered,” said Rigg.

  “There are those who say that,” said Mother. “But one of the scholars who was observing it—Tokwire the astronomer—was using a glass of his own making, which was filled with mirrors, so the other scholars did not trust his observations. But he swears it let him see the sinking of your father’s boat much more clearly than anyone else, and he says he saw hands rising up out of the water, first to tear the floats away, and then to pull straight down on the boat.”

  “Hands? Human hands?”

  “No one believed him. And he quickly dropped the matter, for fear that insisting on the point would ruin his reputation among scholars.”

  “You believe him.”

  “I believe we don’t know what’s on the other side of the Wall,” said Mother.

  “You think there are people there who live in the water? Who can breathe underwater?” asked Rigg.

  “I don’t think anything. I neither say ‘possible’ nor ‘impossible’ to anything,” said Mother.

  “But he passed through the Wall.”

  “And never woke up.”

  “Why is the story not known throughout . . . the Republic?”

  “Because we didn’t want a thousand idiots making the attempt and meeting the same fate,” said Mother.

  “What if there are water people in the next wallfold?” asked Rigg. “They’ve never crossed the Wall, either! Would they even understand what our boats were? What kind of creature Father Knosso was? They might think that because he’s shaped like them, he could breathe underwater as they did.”

  “We don’t know how they’re shaped,” said Mother.

  “We know they have hands.”

  “We know that what Tokwire saw he called hands.”

  “Mother, I can see that Father’s plan should not be tried again,” said Rigg. “I would love to see anything he wrote, or failing that to read everything he read from the library. So I can know what he knew, or at least guess what he guessed. But I swear to you most solemnly that I am not fool enough to attempt to cross the Wall myself, certainly not unconscious, and equally not in a boat. If I’m too stupid to learn from other people’s experiences, I’m no scholar.”

  “You relieve me greatly. Though you must know how it strikes terror in my heart that within a day of your arrival, you’re already talking about duplicating your father’s fatal research.”

  “I was already interested in the Wall before you told me the story of Father Knosso, Mother. Duplicating his research may save me time, but
I have ideas of my own.”

  “I’ll ask Flacommo what is possible concerning the library. But you must promise me to let me serve you as I served your father. Come and tell me all you learn, all you wonder about, all that you guess.”

  “Here?” asked Rigg. “This is your place of privacy, Mother. I’m uncomfortable even now, knowing that I should not be here.”

  “Where else, if we’re not to bore the rest of Flacommo’s house with our tedious scholarly conversation?”

  “The garden,” said Rigg. “Walking among the trees and bushes and flowers. Sitting on benches. Isn’t it a lovely thing, to be among the living plants?”

  “You forget that it’s open to the elements, and winter is almost here.”

  “I spent many a winter in the highest mountains of the Upsheer, sleeping outdoors night after night.”

  “How will this keep me warm in the garden this winter?” asked Mother.

  “We’ll talk together only on sunny days. Maybe my sister will join us, and we can share a bench with you between us—we’d keep you warm enough then, I think!”

  “If your sister ever consents to come out of her seclusion.”

  “A seclusion that excludes her only brother, lost so long and newly come home, is too much seclusion, I think.”

  “It’s what she thinks that counts,” said Mother.

  “Then she doesn’t listen to your advice?” asked Rigg.

  “Listening isn’t obeying,” said Mother.

  “Come with me and show me the house, Mother!” said Rigg. “I think this is an ancient place, with old ways of building.”

  “So you study architecture as well?” asked Mother.

  “I’m a scholar! In my heart, anyway. Old things intrigue me. Especially old buildings! You can imagine how I loved the Tower of O!”

  “I can’t,” said Mother. “I’ve never seen it.”

  “Then I’ll draw you sketches of it.”

  “I’ve seen sketches,” she said testily.

  “But you haven’t seen my sketches!” said Rigg. “Come on, come with me, let’s see this house.”

  Mother allowed herself to be drawn to her feet, and together they began walking the corridors, holding hands. Rigg knew that they were leaving Param behind, invisible, but that could not be helped.

  When Rigg sensed anyone’s path near enough to overhear them, he would walk apart from Mother, letting their hands clasp in the space between. But when he knew they were alone, and no one could hear, he took her hand in both of his, and leaned close.

  It was in those times that he told her about Umbo and Loaf, about going back in time, about the jewel—even now he still mentioned only the one—about his time on the boat with General Citizen, about Shouter’s attempt to kill him, about his own failures to travel back in time without Umbo’s help. She listened to all without interruption.

  In return, she told him little, but apologized for the fact that the little she told was all she knew. Param’s gift was not understood—she simply couldn’t be found sometimes, even as a little child, and then she’d turn up somewhere in the house, hungry and cold. Several governesses were dismissed because of their failure to keep track of her, and finally they were moved into Flacommo’s house precisely because it was tightly walled and she could not escape.

  “I think it’s because of all the secret passages,” said Rigg. “So they could watch her and see what she does.”

  “Then they certainly know what I know. When she was still young, it only happened when she was frightened by something—she’d start turning to run away, and then she faded and was gone before she’d gone far.”

  “Then she learned to control it?” asked Rigg.

  “Now it’s not fear that drives it, but repugnance. She hates the company of anyone but me.”

  “But that wasn’t always so.”

  “There was a time when she had many friends. Courtiers, scholars, men of trade—many visited Flacommo, and among them were some who took a great liking to Param. She said one of the scholars inadvertently helped her learn to understand her invisibility. What he said helped her get control of it, to disappear only when she wanted to, and as long as she wanted, no more.”

  “That must have been a very wise man.”

  “It was a chance thing,” said Mother. “He might have been wise, but he had no idea that the things he said were useful to her, because he couldn’t have known about her invisibility. That’s a story that has not spread. What the servants and courtiers all believe is that Param is painfully shy and hides when she wants no company. They are forbidden to search for her, though of course they couldn’t possibly find her if she didn’t want to be found.”

  “Please tell her that I beg her to join us on our garden walks.”

  “Beg away,” said Mother. “She’ll do what she wants.”

  “Tell her I’m sorry for passing through her in the garden.”

  “What!” said Mother. “You did what?”

  “I knew where she was and I walked through her.”

  “I didn’t know that was possible.”

  “Oh, I’m reasonably certain it happens often enough. She was in the breakfast hall with us this morning. When we left, I made sure we moved around her, but when she’s invisible she can’t move fast enough to get out of the way. She tends to cling to the walls, but I can’t believe she hasn’t been walked through time and again.”

  “She never told me.”

  “She doesn’t want to worry you. And she certainly doesn’t want you trying to guess where she is and then walk around her,” said Rigg.

  “You’ve never met her, and now you’re telling me what she does and doesn’t want me trying to do?”

  “Yes,” said Rigg. “Because it’s the obvious assumption. And it explains the twistings and convolutions of her paths, and why she clings to walls.”

  At last they had seen the whole house, every floor and room and nook and view—except Flacommo’s private quarters, the few locked rooms, and the secret passages. They passed several of the hidden entrances to the system of passages, but Rigg merely took silent notice of the place and determined to come back later. If Rigg was caught exploring near an entrance, he wanted it to be only himself who was suspected of something dangerous.

  Mother retired to her room, and Rigg went back to the kitchen, where the day shift was creating the doughs and batters for the evening’s pies and cakes. He rather liked the symmetry of the two bakers’ each having to bake what the other prepared. He also liked the fact that Lolonga seemed to be competing with her sister to feed more of the excellent bread to Rigg than her sister had. One thing was certain: Rigg would not starve here.

  Rigg began to treat himself as an apprentice cook, never attempting what the bakers’ apprentices did, because things could go wrong, but instead working for the cooks: running their errands; learning by name, by sight and smell, and by usage all the herbs of the kitchen garden; and getting yelled at for his mistakes like any other boy in the kitchen. It wasn’t long before the boys who slept behind the hearth accepted him readily and talked to him like an equal. And to them he spoke in the language of a privick from Fall Ford, letting them make fun of his accent.

  “So which is the real voice of Rigg?” asked Long one day, hearing him with the cooks’ boys.

  “If it comes out of my mouth, it’s my voice,” said Rigg.

  “But the coarse country boy from upriver, with the ribald jokes and funny tales of country life—how can you say he’s the same as the boy who speaks in such a lofty style that he withers most of the courtiers with his wit?”

  “Do I?” said Rigg. “I don’t recall inflicting any injuries.”

  “When everyone laughs at them, they’re destroyed,” said Long. “And you’ve ruined several who haven’t dared come back.”

  “And does anyone miss them?”

  Long laughed.

  “A hunter who carries only one weapon has already decided that all the animals it can’t reach are sa
fe from him.”

  “So you have the weapons of country wit and courtly wit?” asked Long.

  “Let’s say—half of each.”

  “A double halfwit is a wit, I think,” said Long.

  “And now you’ve entered the fray!” cried Rigg, and the two of them tussled in the kitchen garden for a few moments, then remembered their errands and got back to work without waiting for someone to yell at them.

  It was a week before the answer came. Flacommo announced it at dinner.

  “Young Rigg,” said their host. “I have pled your cause before the Revolutionary Council, and they have decided that it’s too much bother for the librarians to have to answer your endless requests and send books back and forth.”

  Rigg did not let himself feel disappointed, because the way Flacommo was talking, it was plain that he was only pretending to be doleful—he had good news.

  “Instead, if a panel of scholars pronounces you worthy to be numbered as one of them, you will be allowed to travel, under escort, to and from the library once a day—though you may stay there as long as you want, or until supper.”

  Rigg leapt to his feet and let out a boyish, privick, unprincely hoot of happiness. Everyone laughed, even Mother.

  CHAPTER 17

  Scholar

  “Our mandate,” said the expendable, “is to serve no individual human being at the expense of the species, but rather to preserve and advance the human species, even if at the expense of a cost-effective number of individuals.”

  “Cost-effective,” echoed Ram. “I wonder how you determine the cost of a human life.”

  “Equally,” said the expendable.

  “Equally to what?”

  “Any other human being.”

  “So you can kill one to save two.”

  “Or a billion in order to bring to pass circumstances that will bring about the births of a billion and one.”

  “It sounds rather cold.”

  “We are cold,” said the expendable. “But raw numbers hardly tell our whole mandate.”

  “I am eager to know,” said Ram, “on what besides numbers you judge the preservation and advancement of the human species.”