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“Vadeshfold?”
“Square is going to put a colony there. It belongs to them.”
“You have a facemask. I’ll get one, too.”
“No,” said Rigg. “And you know why.”
Param couldn’t help it. She started to cry.
“Param, we always knew that what mattered was the survival of the human race on Garden. Not our individual lives.”
“Well, we’ve either saved the human race or failed again, but what about us? Our mission’s over, and here we still are.”
“Once we get past the Destruction,” said Rigg, “the Destroyers will hunt us down and then our troubles are over.”
“And those other Riggs?”
“I think they put up a good fight but the ten aliens who were converging on them killed them all.”
“Couldn’t they have kept duplicating till they outnumbered them all?”
“Could have,” said Rigg, “but to what end?”
“To stay alive!”
“I was staying alive long enough to get information about what that creature was. Its biology. How it could be killed. How its weapons worked. What was inside that aircraft. And to keep it from killing you. And to live long enough to pass all of that on to Umbo and stop us, the real us, the earlier us, from getting trapped in that pit.”
“What will they do? The earlier us, when they get the warning?”
“Well, you’re the Queen-in-the-Tent,” said Rigg. “What would you order?”
“I’d ask for advice.”
“Nobody has any,” said Rigg.
Param thought for a moment. “Just get away?”
“Not a bad plan,” said Rigg. “But that leaves Mother and Haddamander to proclaim that we refused their surrender.”
“Bring an army and trap them in their own firepit,” said Param.
“More satisfying, but then we’re the ones who betrayed and assassinated them.”
“What, then!” Param demanded.
“As I said, I have no idea. No advice. So . . . aren’t you glad that you and I don’t have any such decision to make?”
“Because we’re just going to go into the future and die!”
“The simplest thing would be to let the Destroyers strike while we’re right out in the open. Let the blast take us the way it did the archers.”
“Was it painless for them?” asked Param.
“I doubt it, but I bet it was quick.”
“Why don’t we just disappear?”
“Should we go back and leave another note saying that when a timestream is changed, we don’t disappear, we’re still around trying to figure out how to stay out of the way?”
