Visitors Page 4

  “But you would never . . .”

  “It wouldn’t matter if I was actually guilty,” said Olivenko. “Lack of truthfulness doesn’t weaken a story if you can get enough people to believe the lie.”

  Umbo thought of the comparison between him and Olivenko. “But if they would try to get rid of you, when you know the language and manners of court—”

  “You’ll learn them quickly. And even if someone sees you as a problem or an obstacle, you won’t be as easy to get rid of.”

  “Because I can go back and warn myself.”

  “Or go back and stab the assassin in the back.”

  “Ah, but then there’d be two of me,” said Umbo. “Our old system of warning people without actually traveling back in time had the virtue of not creating copies.”

  Olivenko nodded. “It would be bad for the kingdom if every time somebody tried to kill you, the number of Umbos doubled.”

  “It might get them to stop trying.”

  “But what would you do with the copies?” asked Olivenko. “What Ram Odin did, when he found out he had been re-created eighteen times?”

  Umbo shuddered at the thought of his own two dead copy-­bodies that Odinex had killed the first time Umbo visited his ­buried starship. “I can see that it makes sense, but I don’t know if . . .”

  “All it takes is one of your copies to decide that he’s the original and the others aren’t necessary. But you see my point. Married to you, Param has you close, where you won’t be starting a rival power center.”

  “Instead, my great personal charm will make people want to kill me.”

  “You think there won’t be people trying to kill her?” asked Olivenko. “When it’s about power, it’s always a matter of life and death.”

  “So another reason for marrying me,” said Umbo, “might be so I’d be close enough to save her from assassins and traitors.”

  “Yes,” said Olivenko.

  “Also close enough to harm her, if I chose,” said Umbo. “So apparently she trusts me.”

  “No matter where you are,” said Olivenko, “you could harm her if you chose. Yes, she trusts you. Or at least she hopes she can trust you, which is about as close to trust as powerful people ever get. There are so many incentives for betrayal. It’s a lonely life. She wants you to share it with her. Partly for reasons of state. Or mostly. But I think she believes it will also be a tolerable thing.”

  But the way he said it made Umbo think that Olivenko thought that Param thought that it might be better than tolerable.

  “I still have that adolescent crush,” said Umbo. “I’m better at hiding it, that’s all.”

  “Not so very much better. Disguising it as surly resentment fooled only two people: Param and you.”

  That was the first time it had ever occurred to Umbo that maybe all his feelings of resentment were not really directed at Rigg. They were really there because as long as he thought he could feel sorry for himself because Rigg was always the leader, he didn’t have to feel sorry for himself because Param would never love him.

  “I wish I could go back in time and explain to myself why I was so angry all the time,” said Umbo.

  “Would you have believed yourself? And even if you did, could you have stopped?”

  “If I couldn’t have stopped then, why can I stop now?” asked Umbo.

  “Because she asked you to marry her, you fool,” said Olivenko.

  “It’s going to be a very complicated life,” said Umbo.

  “What do you mean?” asked Olivenko.

  “Being married to the Queen-in-the-Tent.”

  “Oh? Are you going to be married to her?” asked Olivenko.

  “But . . . she asked me.”

  “Yesterday,” said Olivenko. “And since that moment, have you even spoken to her?”

  “I don’t . . . I couldn’t . . .”

  “She asked you to marry her, and after a day you still haven’t answered her.”

  “But she didn’t ask me. She just announced it. As if everyone already knew it was going to happen.”

  “Was she supposed to kneel and beg you to cross her threshold? Give you the key to her house? Pull a symbolic tent over both your heads? Those are the traditional ways, but can you tell me which of those a princess of the Sessamids should use in asking an ignorant privick like yourself to be her consort? She was asking, and you haven’t answered.”

  “So this whole lecture you gave me—”

  “I believe I used a series of pedagogical queries—”

  “Was designed to get me to tell her yes or no?”

  “Absolutely not,” said Olivenko. “If you had been too stupid to understand any of this, I would have gone to her and begged her to rescind the offer.”

  “And then what?” asked Umbo. “Would you have killed me for her, to get me out of the way?”

  “Don’t ever ask questions that can only be answered one way, no matter what the truthful answer might be. It will make you doubt your friends. And that, in case you were wondering, was a lecture.”

  “I was joking.”

  “But because you asked it, no matter how fervently I said that I would never kill you and she would never ask me to anyway, you would always wonder. In fact, you’ll wonder anyway. What a stupid thing to do to yourself.”

  Umbo saw his point. He felt the point, because the question was already gnawing at him. “I notice you haven’t said you wouldn’t kill me.”

  “And I never will say such a stupid thing,” said Olivenko. “Because if you ever posed a real danger to her, I would kill you, if I could. So if I denied it that would be a lie. And you’d know it was a lie. But I tell you this, Umbo. You have earned my trust, and hers too. When she was at her most obnoxious, you never went back in time to harm her. Never did anything that had to be undone—only her brother did that. The whole time she’s known you, you’ve had the power to harm her at any time, and she’s given you plenty of provocation. But you have never raised a hand against her, and never abandoned her. Even when you thought she loved me, you didn’t use your power over time to interfere.”

  “I can’t take any credit for that. Rigg would have just gone back and stopped me.”

  “Before he had that facemask, did he have the power to do that? If you had wanted to go to war with Rigg, wouldn’t you have defeated him easily, in the days before he learned to go back in time without your help? You were the most powerful, and you’re still more powerful than Param or me or Loaf—have you ever used that power to harm any of us? To harm anyone at all? Can Rigg say as much?”

  “He did what he had to do.”

  “But you never felt you had to do such a thing. Hurt and angry, over and over, you never once harmed anyone with your power.”

  “I damaged the mice,” said Umbo, thinking of the way he and Param had warned the Visitors.

  “You acted to save the human race on Earth from extinction, or so you thought. You really can’t get away from being labeled as a person who can be trusted.”

  Umbo felt these words as praise. As honor. He hadn’t understood how hungry he was for such open signs of respect; the emotion of relief and gratitude that filled him threatened to bring him to sudden tears. To deflect it, he turned to his old standby—resentfulness. “I’m not sure if that means I’m good or merely weak,” said Umbo.

  “We all know that you’re good,” said Olivenko. “Annoying, but good. That’s my lesson for today. It’s really the only thing you had to learn before you leave with Loaf to take him home.”

  “And that means there’s really only one thing I have to do,” said Umbo.

  “Then go and do it.”

  “Only I should have done it yesterday,” said Umbo.

  “If there’s anyone on Garden who never has to say such a thing, it’s you,” said Olivenko, “since you still
can do it yesterday. But if I were you, I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Why not?” asked Umbo.

  Olivenko made a twirling gesture with his finger. Turn it around. Answer your own question.

  “Because she’d know that I hadn’t thought of it till later, and only went back in time so she wouldn’t worry about it, but it would still be dishonest. I only realized I needed to answer when you told me, and I should be able to admit that to her, if we’re really going to be husband and wife someday.”

  “Pretty soon you won’t even need me to tell you to answer your own questions yourself,” said Olivenko. “Though I’m always happy to provide that service.”

  Umbo found Param sitting in the grass by the riverbank, leaning against a sapling, with Rigg only about a meter away. They both looked despondent. Only it wasn’t Rigg, Umbo remembered. It was Noxon. Though Noxon had as many memories of their friendship together as the one who was still called Rigg.

  “Before you ask,” said Noxon, “I’m not getting the hang of this at all. I should have her teach you first. Only I’d hate it when you picked it right up.”

  Umbo had an instant answer. Several of them, actually. But he remembered that he wasn’t here to talk to his friend. He was here to talk to the woman he loved—the woman who had asked him to marry her, and had heard no response from him at all, and now wasn’t even looking at him.

  So Umbo ignored Rigg completely. He knelt in the grass in front of Param—and, because he was Umbo, and not the hero of a great story, he knelt on a root and yelped in pain and had to catch himself to keep from falling over and Param couldn’t help but get a little smile on her face and Umbo felt a stab of embarrassment and he realized that a year ago—a week ago—yesterday—he would have resented her for it and it would have deflected him from what he came here to do.

  But he refused to be that version of himself. There are two Umbos as surely as there are two Riggs, but in my case, only one of them can be visible at a time. From now on, I decide which one it’s going to be.

  So he accepted her smile because it wasn’t mocking, it was honest—it really was funny that in trying to be serious, he had knelt on a root and wrecked it. Only it hadn’t wrecked anything, if he decided not to let it.

  He pulled his shirt off over his head, shook it open, and held it between them. “Param, I’ve loved you since I first came to know you. At first it was the princess, the idea of a princess, but that was long ago, and now it’s you that I love, so far as I know you, and you that I want to marry, if you’ll have me.” He held out the shirt to her.

  She took the shoulders of his shirt in her hands, and pulled the cloth over her head to make a tent. Umbo leaned closer and drew the bottom of the shirt over his own head, so it was only the two of them, face to face, under that small tent. He lightly kissed her cheek. She kissed his lips, just as lightly.

  Then she pulled the shirt off her head and handed it back to him. “Next time you propose to a girl, you might bring a nice shawl or even a towel instead of a shirt you’ve already been wearing for hours.”

  “If you can’t stand the way I smell,” said Umbo, “this whole marriage thing isn’t going to work.”

  “So this wasn’t just a proposal,” she said. “It was your first test of my love.”

  She had said the word “love.” He wanted to dance with happiness. Instead, he pulled the shirt back on over his head. “At least you don’t have to wear it,” he said. He got to his feet. “You two still have work to do, and I’m going to go take Loaf home to Leaky.”

  He took a few steps away before Param said, “Hurry home.”

  Umbo stopped and half-turned back to her. “Oh, I’ll be home before you even notice I was gone.”

  “I know,” she said, smiling. Then she made a shooing-away gesture and slid a little closer to Noxon. Umbo could hear the two of them getting back to trying to teach each other unteachable skills as he walked away.

  A royal marriage—the personal part could never be allowed to keep them from their duty.

  CHAPTER 4

  Homecoming

  Even though Leaky had known right from the start that Loaf would go off with Umbo on a mad mission to save Rigg from the People’s Collection of Twits, and had even urged him to go, it still made her angry that he had done it; and she didn’t try very hard to be civil when she saw her husband and that strange time-traveling boy out the door. She threw a lettuce at them as they left, then made a point of closing the door, rather loudly, long before they were out of earshot. There’d be no backward glances to see her standing in the doorway gazing wistfully after her man.

  She couldn’t help it that Loaf was a good man—that was part of why she married him and, in her weaker moments, admitted she loved him. She only wished he could be more selectively good—good for her, then good for the inn, and maybe even good for himself. After that, other people could suck on Ram’s left elbow before she thought Loaf should sacrifice anything for them.

  Nice and hopelessly naive as those boys were, they were worth a bit of washing, stitching, and some food for the ­journey—and nothing more. Instead, Loaf had gone off with them to O, gotten himself arrested, and made his way home with Umbo. Well, wasn’t that enough? But no, Umbo had to go and teach himself how to do something he had only been able to do in combination with Rigg—send messages into the past. And now, armed with this dubious “weapon,” Loaf and Umbo thought they could take on the People’s Revolutionary Cushion-squatters.

  So after shutting the door firmly—not slamming, since when she slammed a door it usually needed repairs—she had a bumptious half hour, deliberately doing everything with too much force, which terrified the customers eating or drinking at such an early hour. Most of them gulped down whatever they were eating or drinking, paid without arguing the price, and hightailed it through the still-functioning front door.

  Once everyone was gone, Leaky realized how foolish it was to go on handling everything so roughly. For one thing, she would have to pay for anything she broke—which included two eggs, a lettuce, and a clay pot. For another thing, there was nobody there to see, not the customers and certainly not the people she was actually annoyed at—Umbo for being so sweet and needy, Rigg for getting himself arrested as a royal, and most of all Loaf for being so abominably fatherly.

  If he’s going to be fatherly, then he should start by begetting a child on her so he could be father to their own.

  Not a thought she allowed herself to think more than once or twice a week. She went back to bumptiousness for a moment, to punish herself for such a wicked thought. After all, she might be the barren one, and him not sterile at all. She had never asked him whether he had sired any children during his soldiering days—she didn’t really want to know the answer anyway—and he had never volunteered the information. “You know, Leaky my love, it’s obvious you’re the one as can’t conceive, seeing that I’ve fathered children in fourteen towns, and them’s only the ones I know about.” No, Loaf would never burden her with such information. Nor could Leaky ask, “Were you chaste as a soldier, my big old bear? Or have you by any chance noticed that you never left a bit of seed behind?”

  She locked the front door of the roadhouse and went out back to chop wood for a while. Chopping wood was always useful, not least for working off some anger.

  She had the ax back over her shoulder, ready to swing, when she saw someone standing right in the path of her swing. She only just stopped herself. “Fool! Are you trying to get—”

  Then she saw that it was Umbo.

  “Back already? And snuck up on me like that?”

  Umbo only shook his head. “Look at me,” he said softly.

  She looked. He was different. Completely different clothes, for one thing. And taller. Not just a little, a lot. A man’s height. Getting to be a tall man’s height. And his face—was that a flash of fuzz on his chin and cheeks?

&
nbsp; “Are you really here or is this just a message from the future?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I’m alive, Loaf is alive, and Rigg got saved along with his sister Param. We all escaped Aressa Sessamo and left the wallfold and it’s been several years.”

  “Years! How irresponsible! It was supposed to be only a few—”

  “Hold your tongue for a moment, if that’s possible,” said Umbo. “This is the fifth time I’ve tried to have a conversation with you but you never shut up long enough to hear me out.”

  “Of course I don’t listen when you—”

  “This is the last time I’ll try,” said Umbo. “If you don’t hear me now, I will not bring Loaf home to you.”

  “How dare you, after—”

  “Still talking,” said Umbo.

  “You have no right to command—”

  Umbo shouted now. “If you don’t listen to me you will never see your husband’s face again. Do you understand that? Can you control your anger long enough to realize that your entire future with Loaf is at stake?”

  Leaky fell silent, but she was even more furious than before.

  “I can see you’re angry,” said Umbo, “but believe me, this isn’t the way I spoke the first time I tried this. It was—would have been—about a week from now, and I didn’t come as a vision like this, I came in person.”

  “You can do that?” she asked.

  “In the past several years, yes, I’ve learned a few things. I’ve changed. So has Loaf.”

  “What aren’t you telling me? Spit it out—has he lost a leg?”

  “Shut. Up. Now.”

  She thought she’d burst with rage at his domineering, dis­respectful attitude.

  “I’ve been through this confrontation and everything failed. I tried hearing you out, but when you rage, Madam Leaky, you make yourself angrier and less reasonable. So this is my final attempt. Loaf agrees with me. If you can’t listen and accept what I’m going to tell you, he’s going to figure it’s as if he died on our journey and he’ll never come home to you. So what’s at stake now is this: Can you be silent, or do you want to never see your husband again?”