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“Square, that’s not something—”
“Loaf wanted me and so he chose to have me raised by Vadesh and the nursewomen brought here to Vadeshfold. He visits me a lot—as often as he can get one of you to send him. He’s as good a dad as he can be. And you and Rigg are helping him so I never feel alone. But if Leaky wanted to visit me, she could, and she doesn’t, so she doesn’t.”
Umbo had his own inner debate now, about what was right—to keep his promise, or to break it because it was right for Square to know the truth. Truth won. “Square, she had the son she bore out of her own body. That she remembered bearing. His name is Round. But you were a baby who came out of nowhere. She didn’t doubt my story, but it wasn’t her, it was another woman in another timestream. That’s how it felt to her.”
“I already forgave her long ago,” said Square. “If I had a mother who loved me, would you have been able to put a facemask on me?”
“Rigg and I loved you,” said Umbo. “If the facemask had been disastrous, we would have gone back and prevented the attempt.”
“How do you know it wasn’t disastrous?” asked Square. “How do you know I’m the human baby all grown up, and not a facemask that had a real chance to control the human it was given to control?”
“Is that what you want me to think?” asked Umbo.
“I just wondered when you became sure that you had made the right choice?”
Umbo had no answer for that.
Square began to laugh. “By Silbom’s right buttcheek, you haven’t decided yet, have you!”
“Mostly,” said Umbo. “We mostly think you’re mostly human.”
“Except when?” asked Square. “What are my inhuman things?”
“Nothing. Just . . . Loaf only has doubts because he says you’re way smarter than either him or Leaky, and Rigg assures him that you aren’t smart at all, and I tell them everybody’s smarter than them.”
“When it’s really just because my pal helps me remember things,” said Square. “I know the difference between me and him. He’s not in control.”
“I know he’s not,” said Umbo. “I know that you really are yourself. It’s not that we ever picked a day and said, ‘Today we decide whether Square is human or not.’ You’re as human as Rigg or Loaf, or anybody else who made it through the facemask as an adult. Only you and the other babies, you didn’t have any struggle over it. It was peaceful all the way. Which is why we finally believe Vadeshex isn’t a failure. Yes, the first few generations here wiped each other out, but those weren’t these facemasks, and they didn’t get them as babies, the way the Larfolders do.”
“So we’re the real Vadeshfolders, right?” asked Square. “Me and the children, here, now. Not those adults a couple of centuries from now who took on facemasks to become supersoldiers like Loaf and Rigg.”
“That’s right. In fact, we’re talking about offering you and the other kids a chance to go back to a time soon after humans in Vadeshfold became extinct, and let you have almost the whole eleven thousand years. You just have to promise to leave this area empty, so they don’t interfere with us bringing you here.”
“When are you going to offer that?” asked Square.
“When the other kids are old enough to decide,” said Umbo. “And when you take a mate and we find the best way to get facemasks on your babies.”
Square got solemn. “These are my sisters,” he said.
“We’ve been worried about that.”
“I need to find somebody from outside. Somebody who takes the facemask as an adult.”
“They won’t be pretty,” said Umbo.
“You think I haven’t seen Rigg and Loaf? I don’t care about pretty, I care about not mating with somebody I grew up with.”
“I agree with your sentiments. So does the whole civilized species.”
“So my plan really is the best one.”
“I’m shocked that you think you’ve proven your point when I’m not aware of your having done any such thing.”
“Which means you’re not shocked, you just think it’s amusing the way I leap to conclusions and don’t show you my reasoning. You’re as bad as Rigg about that, in your own way.”
“I’m so glad to hear it,” said Umbo.
“Here’s my thinking. You can’t decide to bump us back ten thousand years till the younger ones are old enough to make a rational decision. That’s going to be years from now. Meanwhile, you have to test mating, and since I’m the oldest, that means you need me to mate. But I’m not going to mate until I find somebody from outside Vadeshfold, which means you have to take me out of here and then we have to see if the person who falls in love with me can take a facemask.”
