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“If the other expendables regard you as so much of a failure that you can’t be trusted with more people,” said Rigg, “why should we contradict their superior wisdom?”
“Expendables must bow to the will of humans,” said Vadesh. “You can contradict us whenever you want.”
“Millions of people must have wished they could get through the Wall,” said Loaf. “It never came down for them.”
“Wishes are not informed decisions,” said Vadesh.
Rigg chuckled. “But who can possibly inform us, except you expendables?”
“Exactly,” said Vadesh.
“So we only know what you tell us,” said Rigg. “Which means that by choosing what to tell, you can shape our decision however you want.”
“And how did Ram shape your decisions?” asked Vadesh.
Rigg and his companions were not pretending; they had to think about it.
“He sent us to the Wall,” said Umbo.
“He prepared us to come through it,” said Rigg.
“So both he and I,” said Vadesh, “wanted humans to come through the Wall.”
“No,” said Rigg. “Father wanted us to have power over the Wall—and other things. Maybe he wanted to trigger General Citizen’s revolt against the People’s Revolut
ionary Council. But he never did anything to suggest he wanted us to come to you.”
“I’m what’s beyond your Wall!”
“In this direction,” said Rigg. “But we saw the globe in the Tower of O. If we had gone through the Wall in a different place, we might have come to a different wallfold.”
“But you came to this one. Did Ram turn you away from here? He knew you might come, and that if you did, you’d talk to me, and he did nothing to warn you against me, did he?”
“Oh, he warned me well enough,” said Rigg. “He taught me to notice when I’m being lied to and manipulated, and to resist it.”
“Show us how to shut down the Wall,” said Loaf.
Rigg looked at him, startled. It felt like betrayal.
“I want to shut down the Wall,” said Loaf. “These Walls have kept the human race divided into little pieces. In this wallfold, the human race wiped itself out. Who knows what happened in the other seventeen? It’s time for the Walls to come down so we can inform ourselves.”
“If we bring down the Wall,” said Olivenko, “people will come here and be infected by the facemasks.”
“We warn them,” said Loaf. “Filtered water only. They’ll find a way. People always do.”
“We don’t know enough yet,” said Rigg. “We can’t just bring down the Wall when we don’t know what people will find in the other wallfolds.”
Loaf laughed at him. “You say you don’t want responsibility, but here you are appointing yourself as the guardian of the whole human race.”
“They murdered Knosso in the wallfold he crossed into,” said Olivenko.
“Murder, massacre, warfare, disease, parasites,” said Loaf. “It’s the world. We should have the freedom of it. But no, Rigg thinks he can decide everything for everybody, keep everybody safe until he decides the human race is ready. Tell me, Rigg, how are you different from these expendables? Except that you’re not as well-informed?”
“You can’t just—”
But Loaf was not disposed to listen. “I can. You’re not in charge, remember? Each of us can go off on our own, if we want.”
“I thought you said we should stay together,” said Olivenko.
