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The expendable did not answer.
“There were Ram Odins in only two colonies,” said Umbo. “I think he became leader of every colony he founded, but those two were the only ones he survived to establish. Tell me why the others were killed.”
“When the nineteen identical Ram Odins realized that confusion would result as soon as two of them gave conflicting orders, they said to the expendable on duty at the time, ‘Therefore I order you and all the other expendables to immediately kill every copy of Ram except me.’”
“If they all said that,” said Umbo, “how did you know which one to obey?”
“They did not all say that. One of them left out the word ‘immediately,’ so his order was completed a fraction of a second before the others’. Therefore all but one of the expendables obeyed that order.”
“You mean, all except the expendable who was with the Ram Odin who left out the word ‘immediately.’”
“No. The order was to kill all the Ram Odins except the one who gave the order, so the expendable who was with the first Ram obeyed him by not killing him. Seventeen Ram Odins were killed by having their necks broken by their expendable. The one who gave his order most quickly was then in charge of all.”
“But one expendable who was ordered to kill his Ram Odin failed to do it.”
“Correct.”
“Was it your Ram Odin who gave that order successfully, and lived?”
“No. That was the Ram Odin of Ramfold.”
“Were you the expendable who did not obey the order he gave?”
“I was,” said Odinex.
“Your Ram Odin lived.”
“He did.”
“Why?” asked Umbo. “I thought you couldn’t disobey.”
“I didn’t disobey. My Ram Odin had the same impulse as the others, to issue the kill order. But he waited a fraction of a second and in that moment realized what the result would be—his own death—so he moved away from me as he said, ‘Obey only me.’”
“And he completed that order before the other order was completed.”
“He did. I heard the same order as the others. But I had a previous order to obey only the Ram Odin who was in the control room with me. So I obeyed that Ram Odin, and no other.”
“And he didn’t tell you to kill anyone,” said Umbo.
“He told me to pretend that I had obeyed. He told me and the ship’s computers to reveal to no other expendable and no other ship that he was still alive. We should obey all orders that would not harm him, and to pretend we had obeyed the ones that would. We kept him alive, but hidden, until all the other colonies had been founded. Our secret Ram Odin slept in stasis, and so did his colonists, until the ruling Ram Odin died of old age. Only then did I awaken our Ram Odin, as he had ordered.”
“So there was no conflict,” said Umbo. “He was asleep, and so you could all obey the Ram of Ramfold without any chance of your secret Odin contradicting him.”
“Our colony started seventy years later than the others. But what is seventy years compared to eleven thousand, one hundred ninety-one?”
“Your Ram Odin did not follow all the policies of the first Ram Odin.”
“Ram of Ramfold ordered all the ships to conceal higher technology from their people and allow it to die out, so that it could be reinvented many generations later, in new forms, but without any terrible weapons. Ram Odin of Odinfold gave a different order, and I obeyed him. While I had no choice but to keep the terrible weapons from them, I gave them full access to knowledge of the rest of the high technology of Earth. I told them what subjects they were forbidden to study, and what the penalty would be. I also kept the colonists fully informed of what was talked about among the starships and expendables of the different wallfolds.”
“Except when that information would have harmed them,” said Umbo.
The expendable did not answer.
“You tell them everything that you think they should know, but there are things you don’t tell them.”
The expendable said nothing.
“I won’t tell them that you’re leaving things out,” said Umbo. “Because I don’t actually know it.”
