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“Stopped treating me badly in order to neutralize me as a threat to her kingdom.”
“No. Wrong lesson,” said Olivenko. “Her change in feelings toward you happened during a time when nobody thought of her going back into Ramfold. When for all she knew she would go on wandering with us forever.”
“It’s you she fell in love with,” said Umbo.
“Had her adolescent puppy-dog crush on,” corrected Olivenko. “Only I knew that’s what it was and guided her through that phase and out the other side.”
Umbo recognized at once that yes, that was exactly what Olivenko had done. And since Olivenko had now assigned himself to think about kingdom politics, Umbo said, “You could have exploited that. You could have made her devoted to you.”
“For a while, yes,” said Olivenko. “Long enough to get her to marry me, perhaps, though I’m just as common as you. I do know more about the language and manners of the court, but I would have been a liability to her without any timeshaping talents to make up for it. As soon as she realized that, then she’d either be miserable, living with a bad choice of consort—or I’d be thrown away. Or killed. Not necessarily by her or by her order—there would be plenty of courtiers who would understand how embarrassing and useless I was, and would therefore help their queen by discreetly killing her husband. Or catching him in some act of infidelity.”
“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?”
